The story: Nineteen-year-old Adrien comes back to his father's flat to live; the two haven't seen each other in three years. Clement has a teenage girl living with him who is using heroin. Louise, the girl, at first rejects Adrien, then later falls in love with him. An unstable situation becomes worse as we learn that Adrien is sought by the police for theft.
I've never known what to make of Assayas. Demonlover, Destinées sentimentales and Clean don't seem the work of the same director. This is an uneasy mixture of love story, semi-documentary study of alienated urban youth and Paris-by-night travelogue. He gets fine performances by Judith Godrèche, Jean Pierre Léaud and Thomas Langmann (who was nominated for a Cesar for most promising actor) but the story is full of holes. Why a man in his forties would put up with a sullen, self-pitying teenage junkie is beyond me. Louise mooches off her mother, who runs a beauty parlor, then overdoses and almost dies in a park overnight. Her face doesn't show any of the ravages such a life would wreak. Think of this picture as a trial run for later triumphs like Irma Vep and Clean.
I've never known what to make of Assayas. Demonlover, Destinées sentimentales and Clean don't seem the work of the same director. This is an uneasy mixture of love story, semi-documentary study of alienated urban youth and Paris-by-night travelogue. He gets fine performances by Judith Godrèche, Jean Pierre Léaud and Thomas Langmann (who was nominated for a Cesar for most promising actor) but the story is full of holes. Why a man in his forties would put up with a sullen, self-pitying teenage junkie is beyond me. Louise mooches off her mother, who runs a beauty parlor, then overdoses and almost dies in a park overnight. Her face doesn't show any of the ravages such a life would wreak. Think of this picture as a trial run for later triumphs like Irma Vep and Clean.